As Iowa lawmakers vote to end most abortions, woman shares journey from shame to autonomy

Suzanna de Baca, president and chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood of the Heartland, speaks to legislators and community members during a public hearing on SF 359, the fetal heartbeat bill being considered in the Iowa House.
Kelsey Kremer/The Register

Alexandra Rucinski of Burlington poses in front of the U.S. Capitol on her recent trip to lobby her senators for women's health care.(Photo: Special to the Register)

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, Iowa House Republicans voted to impose what Democrats argued would be the nation's most restrictive abortion policy: a ban on abortions at around six weeks of pregnancy or after a fetal heartbeat can be detected.

Pointing to the majority party's passage the previous year of a bill rejecting federal funding for Planned Parenthood clinics, House Democrats argued the Republicans had actually helped increase the need for abortions in Iowa. Four Planned Parenthood clinics, which provided comprehensive health care, screenings and birth control, were forced to close simply because the organization uses other funding to offer abortions.

If you want to really understand what that could mean, both practically and to a woman's identity and health, listen to 27-year-old Alexandra Rucinski of Burlington. She makes as compelling a case as I have heard for why the types of access now being denied to Iowa's women are counterproductive and crushing. It's her life story.

Rucinski grew up in poverty, one of seven children in a conservative Mormon family that was challenged by mental illness and domestic violence and dependent on government support. As she describes it, women in the faith were encouraged to have lots of children and stay home with them. Men were supposed to have high-paying jobs to make that possible, a calculus that failed to acknowledge the economic toll of raising many children on low-income couples.

Birth control was discouraged even within marriage; sex was mainly for procreation and to perpetuate the religion. Forget abortion. And forget sex education. A woman’s sexuality was not hers. “It was God’s and your future husband’s,” explains Rucinski. “A man you had never met had more claim to your body than you did.”

This is not intended to single out one religion for blame. Many faiths have strains of patriarchy embedded deep within them. It is described only to establish the stifling mindset of shame and fear of sexuality that this young woman experienced, and how it put her physical and emotional well-being at risk. A similar mindset is behind what the Legislature's majority voted to impose on Iowans.

Girls in Rucinski's church were called “walking pornography” if they dressed revealingly, so in effect, they were to blame if men sexually assaulted them, she said. “I dressed to protect the men around me. I feared my sexuality." Women were supposed to wait until marriage to get Pap smear screenings for cervical cancer, as if cancer waits for wedlock.

Rucinski wanted desperately to do right by her church. She believed her path to salvation was abstaining until she married a Mormon. But her first kiss, at 21, was with someone who wasn’t Mormon, whom she had known since elementary school. And then, never having had the tools or training to prevent it, she got pregnant.

Lacking health insurance, she was directed to Burlington's Planned Parenthood clinic, which treated uninsured patients. She was amazed to find the people there were kind and presented her three options (keeping the baby, adoption or abortion) “in the same tone of voice. They just wanted to take care of me.

"I remember saying to the doctor, ‘People are so wrong about this place.'"

She had chosen to keep the baby, so they made her an appointment with an obstetrician. Then, during exams and testing, she learned she had the HPV virus, which can lead to cervical cancer. Some cells had to be scraped out and she was fine, but she wondered, what if she had never gotten pregnant? She began to see more ways she'd been put at risk by misinformation and lack of access.

Because she was unwed, her church urged her to marry or relinquish the baby to its adoption service. But she did neither, arguing, “Marriage does not make a woman worthy of her children.” She is still with the baby's father and they share parenting Oliver, now 6. When she refused to start a repentance process at church, it opted for her "disfellowship,” meaning she could attend but was effectively shunned.

Instead, she found an online community of feminist Mormons, which "gave me permission to start asking questions." And she began speaking out. When the Burlington Planned Parenthood clinic was slated for closure last year, leaving women to travel 79 miles to Iowa City for birth control, Rucinski organized a protest march and rally in her city. She urged people to get involved and called out her state representatives who had voted to reject funds for Planned Parenthood.

A week ago, Planned Parenthood flew Rucinski to Washington D.C., for its lobbying day, where she urged Iowa senators Joni Ernst and Charles Grassley to get federal funding for a new clinic in Burlington. At a previous town hall meeting with Ernst, she challenged the senator about the clinic closures, as this video shows.

Ernst's response came down to, "I will stand on my decision. I am pro-life." But this debate isn't about any legislator's individual or religious beliefs. It's about women's right to access the services they're legally entitled to, free from the sort of judgment and shaming Rucinski grew up with.

In arguing to take away one of the most fundamental of women's rights Wednesday, Iowa lawmakers resorted to similar language. They won that round. Now a new struggle begins, and it will take a great deal of resistance to hold on to the right to make the most personal of decisions for ourselves.

Rekha Basu is an opinion columnist for The Des Moines Register. Contact: rbasu@dmreg.com Follow her on Twitter @RekhaBasu and at Facebook.com/ColumnistRekha. Her book, "Finding Her Voice: A collection of Des Moines Register columns about women's struggles and triumphs in the Midwest," is available at ShopDMRegister.com/FindingHerVoice.